(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - The Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival celebrates bold, original and experimental work from local and national artists.

Co-director Jay Perry is here to tell us all about it.

Hi, Jay.

What a pleasure to have you.

- Hi, Mary.

Thank you so much for having me.

- Yeah.

- It's great to see you again.

- You too.

So the Fringe Festival, Salt Lake style is coming right up.

- Yes.

- And you've got two venues.

- Yes.

- So there's a lot going on.

I don't know where we start, so I'll let you start.

- Okay, well, the Fringe Festival, the Salt Lake Fringe Festival is a lot like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that started in Scotland back in 1947.

There are fringe festivals now all over the world as a lot of people are aware, and we now have one in Salt Lake City.

It's actually been here for 11 years.

We're going into our 11th season this summer.

And so, yes, we have venues in two different spots this year.

One is at the Alliance Theater at Trolley Square and then the other is at The Gateway in a new venue that is run by Mad King Theater Company and that is called the Fellowship Theater.

So we're really happy to be partnering with them too.

- All right, and I know there's so many different performances going on, like everything, theater, all of it.

So do you wanna highlight some of them for us?

- Sure, yes.

We have a little bit of everything.

So there's comedy.

We've got some improv.

There's of course some drama.

There are three one-person shows this year.

And, you know, there's some interesting things too about this year's Fringe.

All of the shows in this year's Fringe are with local theater companies or local new artists.

There are some student artists from a couple of the universities.

There's even some children's theater, so there's a little bit of something for everybody.

- Oh, wow.

- Also this year, something that's really cool is that we have two companies returning to Fringe this year who were with the very first Fringe in 2015, and those are Sackerson and Plan-B Theatre Company that are putting shows on.

So there's a little bit of something that people may have experienced before.

- I love it.

I'm so glad you're doing it.

It's such fun.

Thank you so much for being here.

- It's a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

- And if you'd like to know something more about the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, July 24th to August 3rd, and those performances, and they are varied, will be at the Alliance Theater at Trolley Square and Fellowship Theater at The Gateway.

So find out everything you need to know at greatsaltlakefringe.org.

Greatsaltlakefringe.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact."

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Hi, I'm Mary Dickson.

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